


The Many's Gathered Choices

by Dolorosa



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 17:20:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7115146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolorosa/pseuds/Dolorosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will makes a different choice at the end of <em>Silver on the Tree</em>, with echoes and reverberations that continue to affect him, Bran, Simon, Jane and Barney over the course of their lives. As the years go by, each is faced with choices large and small, supernatural and mundane, simple and profound. </p><p>Please see the endnote for details of applicable warnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Many's Gathered Choices

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coralysendria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coralysendria/gifts).



I. Simon

It was Simon’s idea, but the other four had to admit, later, that they were grateful to him for thinking of it. Privately, Will hadn’t expected things to work out so well — that they would all have half-term holidays at the same time, that Bran’s father would be able to spare him long enough to let him go away to the seaside, that his own parents would be happy wrangling seven children (because of course James and Mary were there as well) over the course of a week in Cornwall — but everything had been startlingly easy to arrange. And so, on a crisp, cool April evening, the five of them climbed Kemare Head, a careful, sombre procession in the long grass. Barney, with his flair for the dramatic, had wanted to carry candles, or flaming torches, but the slight breeze had put paid to that idea. And so their arms were empty as they rounded the top of the headland, apart from the handful of driftwood and kindling they’d gathered earlier on the beach.

Simon placed a restraining hand on Will’s shoulder.

‘This is a good spot, I think,’ he said, settling down behind a little outcrop of stones.

It was the point at which the headland was highest, but the rocky outcrop afforded some measure of shelter. The sun was melting into the sea, a blaze of red against the grey-green water. Bran and Jane began to construct the fire, piling up twigs and scraps of paper on top of larger pieces of wood. Barney settled into a crouch, watching intently as the bonfire began to take shape. 

‘Yes,’ said Will. ‘Yes, this will do.’

*

Later, as the fire crackled and blazed, they passed around a flask of hot cocoa, and took it in turns to talk.

‘I remember him walking out of the mist in the mountains,’ said Bran, his voice soft against the sigh of the sea.

‘He seemed like a figure out of the old stories, appearing as if from nowhere, tall and ageless and regal, and I knew I would do all I could to help him.’

‘He was all those things,’ said Simon, ‘and yet at the same time, he was our great-uncle, who always had time to listen to Barney babble about hidden treasure, or talk to me about the things he found on his trips around the world.’

‘I miss him,’ said Will.

‘If he were here,’ said Simon, ‘he would tell you that you made the right choice. If we are truly to struggle against the Dark for the rest of our lives, we have to do so in full knowledge of what took place before. Instead of some glorious, eternal quest, it’s going to be lots of little battles, lots of everyday choices, both supernatural and otherwise. How could any of us make those choices — confront evil in all its guises — without knowing what we did to drive the Dark from the world? No one should have to make that kind of choice without full knowledge of all the experiences that came before — otherwise it’s not really a choice at all! None of us would have wanted to walk away from that, and it was right that you didn’t make the decision for us.’

‘What Simon is trying to say, in his wordy and earnest way, is that Gumerry would have been proud of you, Will,’ said Jane, hugging her knees against the cold.

‘He would have wanted us to live with this knowledge,’ said Bran.

The five of them sat on the headland, lost in their own thoughts, until the fire burnt down to embers.

II. Bran

The Old Library was silent, apart from the whispery scratch of pencils on paper, as Bran and his fellow students tried to complete their notes before five o’clock, when the library closed. The five of them — final-year students reading Celtic languages and literature at the University of Oxford — had been fortunate enough to gain entry to the collection of manuscripts housed by Jesus College, and were taking notes to discuss in their palaeography tutorials.

Bran was tired. He had rushed from a seminar on medieval Welsh and Irish law texts (no matter what people said, his fluency in modern Welsh did not give him a great advantage when dealing with the medieval form of the language, and the less said about Irish, the better) to find he had missed lunch in college, and had had to come in for the afternoon’s transcribing with only an apple for sustenance. 

So when the library’s lights started flickering and flashing, and a faint sound of music hovered in the air, at first Bran thought he was imagining things, hallucinating due to hunger and exhaustion. He brushed a weary hand over his eyes, and turned back to his manuscript, wondering if he could leave early and still manage to produce a good essay.

And then a scream rang out in the library.

Bran turned, and saw his fellow student, Hugh, white-faced and staring in shock at the manuscript on the table next to him.

‘It’s Catherine!’ said Hugh. ‘She — she just _vanished_!’

Bran hastened to his side. Elen and Tim, the other two students in the library, followed afterwards.

‘Take a breath, and tell me what you saw,’ Bran said to Hugh.

Hugh was shaking, opening and shutting his mouth, and looked as if he might faint.

‘I was doing my own transcription, here at the table next to Catherine’s, and as far as I know, she was doing the same. All I know is that she put down her pencil, borrowed the cloth on my table to wipe down her fingers, and turned the page on her manuscript. And the next thing I know, she disappeared! I only saw it out of the corner of my eye, but I swear I’m telling you the truth!’

‘It’s all right, Hugh. I believe you,’ said Bran. 

He was trying to look at Catherine’s manuscript without attracting the others’ attention, and wondering how he was going to convince the others to leave the library. He had noticed that the new page Catherine had turned to looked out of place, as if a leaf had been inserted into the binding. It was clumsily done — the new leaf was shorter than those around it, and the writing was cramped and slanting, whereas a quick check of the preceding folio confirmed that the rest of that section of manuscript was written in a rounded, even hand. Bran squinted at the text, trying to decipher its meaning, with half his mind preoccupied on the other three students in the room.

‘You need to go and get the librarian,’ he said. ‘And someone should go back to St Hilda’s — I suppose that should be you, Elen — and check Catherine’s room, to make sure she hasn’t returned there somehow.’

Bran sounded more authoritative than he felt, and he was surprised when the others did as he suggested. The late afternoon sun fell on the manuscript through slanted windows, as Bran bent over the offending leaf, peering at its almost incomprehensible words. He was alone in the library.

He took a breath, and stepped into the manuscript.

*

It was like falling into water. It had been close to ten years since Bran had experienced any hint of the supernatural, and it troubled him that it had been so easy. It was as if the page wanted him inside.

He was standing in a blasted landscape: black rocks and bare trees beneath an unsettling orange sky. There was not a breath of wind, and sound carried oddly, as if the air was thick and viscous. Catherine was nowhere to be seen.

Bran pressed forward, trying not to think about how he was going to get back.

It was hard to tell how much time passed as he trudged beneath that strange, burning sky, but after a while, Bran noticed that he was making no forward progress. He stopped, and tried to think. 

That was when he noticed that the place was alive with Wild Magic.

He had feared an attack of the Dark, some fresh assault after the powers he and the others had fought off in childhood had had a decade to brood and regroup, and had doubted his ability to face this alone. But Wild Magic could be bargained with, and that, he felt, he could manage.

He reached deep inside himself, trying to remember the words, the tone of voice, and the delicate balance between confidence and humility that he would need to be taken seriously by whatever power held sway in the strange land in which he found himself.

‘I come as a visitor to this domain, I acknowledge the power that holds me here and prevents me from moving forward, and I respectfully request that you make yourself visible!’ Bran said, in ringing tones. The air of the place distorted his voice, making it echo oddly.

A faint vibration in the ground under his feet was his only indication that his request had been acknowledged. And then a voice, faint and crackling.

‘What is it you want, silver man? Why do you walk into my lands with iron in your pocket and leather on your feet?’

The voice seemed to come from all around him.

‘I have come for my friend, who was brought here without her consent,’ said Bran.

‘Oh, but your friend _did_ choose to come here. By blood and flesh and breath she made her choice.’

‘What do mean by that?’ asked Bran, trying to keep his voice level.

‘Flesh — three red hairs fell from her head onto the page. Breath — she inhaled and exhaled over the words. Blood — she scratched her own hand by accident, and a drop touched the page, though she tried to wipe it clean.’

‘You must know that that is no true choice at all,’ said Bran. ‘Let her return — let her be returned unchanged — and tell me what you needed her for, and I will do my best to help you achieve it.’

There was a laugh, an unsettling sound reverberating all around Bran, and then the voice continued talking.

‘You want to bargain, nameless man? It’s true, there are traces of magic around you, but can you make the rivers run again? Can you make the night return to the sky, or the leaves return to the trees?’

‘Could my friend have done that?’ Bran countered. ‘How could she possibly have helped with that?’

He crouched down, running his hands along the sharp rocks, feeling the heat of the sky upon him, and realised what he would need to do to fix it.

‘I will make a bargain with you,’ Bran said, in ringing tones, ‘and it will be as follows. Once I’ve given you what you need, you will release my friend and me to our world and make no further claim on her. You must agree to this, or I’ll go no further.’

There was silence.

‘You have to agree, or I will not restore life and growth to your lands.’

‘Very well,’ said the voice, more faintly this time, ‘I accept your terms.’

Carefully, wordlessly, Bran took out his pocketknife — the blade that had so tormented his supernatural interlocutor — and pressed it to his finger. He made a small prick, and let the blood fall to the parched earth. He pulled three pale hairs from his head, and tied them to the dry, bare branch of a nearby tree. And he turned his face skywards, inhaled, and exhaled deeply.

‘Blood, hair, and breath. I have given you freely what you took from my friend without her knowledge. Blood to make the rivers run, hair to turn to leaves and vines, and air to restore the cycle of night and day. Now bring my friend back to me, and we’ll be on our way.’

The land was rumbling and roaring. Until Bran heard the river rushing past, he couldn’t quite believe it had worked. And then there were leaves on the tree beside him, and flowers, and Catherine, with traces of gold flickering in her eyes.

She and Bran turned, and walked away beneath a starry sky.

*

Later, as Bran stood in the library and wondered what he was going to tell his fellow students, the mismatched fragment of manuscript caught his eye. The words seemed to shift and tumble, rearranging themselves until he could read them, though he knew they were in no language that he recognised.

_You will be called to return if you are needed._

‘I understand,’ he said aloud in the empty room. ‘I understand that I made that choice.’

III. Barney

Barney lay back against the hill, under the warm, darkening evening sky, watching the stars slowly emerge. He listened to the murmur of voices, as Ruth, Gillian and Sam passed around bottles of beer and a bag of plums, and thought that life was good.

The four of them had spent the day at a small local fair — craft stalls selling misshapen pottery, wind chimes, handmade soap and candles and the like, a middle-aged man dressed up like a medieval blacksmith, inexplicably selling hot pies out of a horse-drawn cart, a beer tent, and a rotation of bands performing in the open field — their last stop on a spur-of-the-moment trip around England. It had been two years since they’d seen each other, when they all graduated from art school and drifted off to the next stages of their lives. Barney had been worried that they might have drifted too far apart, that the easy camaraderie of their student days might have been impossible to replicate, but their trip had been comfortable and fun, arguments about street maps and small country roads aside. 

They were at present in Glastonbury — at Barney’s request. ( _I know it’s naff_ , he said, as they darted into a series of shops selling Arthuriana — Merlin’s Magic Supplies, The Round Table Book Shop, Nimue’s Crystals, and the like — _but it’s my kind of naff_.) The festival had been an unexpected surprise, and had meant that every bed-and-breakfast and pub in the area was fully booked. The four of them were undaunted by this setback, and had resolved to sleep out under the stars. Thankfully, the weather had held.

Sam and Gillian were arguing about the merits of watercolours versus charcoal. Gillian brandished her latest sketch, waving it about as if to make a point.

‘See, it’s just _cleaner_ ,’ she insisted. ‘A few bold lines in black and white, and it gets the job done!’

‘There’s more _life_ to the work in colour,’ said Sam.

Barney didn’t join in. For one thing, he was currently focusing on sculpture — complicated, fiddly figures in bronze — and thus had little to add to a debate about sketches. For another, he was carrying a secret.

In the years since he’d finished art school, he’d been scratching out a living teaching sketching and doing illustrations on commission. It had been hard, but he had just about managed.

However, he had just become aware of an amazing opportunity. He’d been browsing through one of the Arthurian shops — something selling tarot cards and jewellery made out of wire and crystals — when a woman, draped in billowing swathes of cloth and covered with strands of ringing, silvery bells had swept up to the counter, armed with a stack of posters and leaflets. She was advertising a competition for artists under thirty. The prize was an exhibition space, and the opportunity for the winning artist to sell the art displayed. There was also a cash prize. In other words, the sort of well-paid opportunity of any new artist’s dreams.

Barney had been alone in the shop, and had gathered up one of the posters, folding it over and over until, crumpled, it fit inside his pocket. Barney thought about the numbers of young artists likely to enter the competition, and the slim chances of winning, and the difficulties in paying for exhibition space, and how much he hated relying on teaching for income. He thought about Sam’s watercolours, Gillian’s architectural sketches, and Ruth’s vivid prints, and weighed them against his own sculptures. And then his friends returned after their foray into yet another fully booked pub, and the moment to tell them passed. 

*

As Sam and Gillian continued arguing half-heartedly, Barney put his hand in his pocket. He closed his fingers around the poster, and it was as if it burned him. The weight of it weighed him down.

‘Pass me another bottle, Ruth,’ Barney said, reaching into his pocket, ‘and let me tell you about this poster I found in one of the shops in town.’

IV. Jane

Will gripped his mug of tea, and watched Jane dart around her sitting room, building up the fire, setting out biscuits, fresh from the oven and smelling of cinnamon and ginger, and shooing a pair of cats out of the way, before settling on the chair vacated by its feline inhabitants. She set the steaming teapot down on a stone coaster, and sighed.

‘How are you coping?’ he asked, as she sipped at her own tea.

‘I’m keeping busy,’ she replied. ‘I’m baking my own bread, and taking care of the garden — I’ve got vegetables, and herbs, and this year the fruit trees yielded enough to make jams and chutneys and apple jelly, and even a bit of cider — you must take some with you when you go. The chickens are laying, so I’m eating fresh eggs almost every days. And I’ve got a couple of children coming to me for tutoring, and several more for piano lessons — I won’t starve, if that’s what you’re asking.’

Will looked at her steadily. 

‘You know that’s not what I’m asking.’

Jane sighed, and pushed her greying hair out of her eyes.

‘The threats stopped after I went to the papers,’ she said. 

‘I mean, once the story was out there, there was nothing much they could do, and thirty years of teaching meant that I had a good sense when people are blustering without intending to follow through.’

Will dipped a biscuit into his tea.

‘It still doesn’t seem right, that you discovered your employer — one of the wealthiest schools in the land — was embezzling money, money that could have gone to fund scholarship places, or staff salaries, or even, oh, I don’t know, repairing the chapel roof, and all that happens is you become unemployable, the _Times_ prints two paragraphs about it on page 12, and everything continues as it was before!’ 

‘Your righteous indignation is noted — I feel it too — but there really is nothing more I can do. I confronted the school administration, I told the parents of my students, I alerted the authorities, I went to the press, and short of standing outside the school gates with placards or chaining myself to the headmistress’s car, I’ve done all I can.’

‘Oh, I’m not doubting that,’ said Will. ‘Your conscience should be clear — you made a choice, the only moral one in your circumstances. I’m just furious that you are the only one who is suffering the consequences of that choice.’

‘Suffering?’ said Jane, raising her eyebrows as she indicated the roaring fire, bright, comfortable living room, purring cats, and tottering tower of biscuits.

‘My boys visit from time to time, my students keep me active, I’ll be able to live out my retirement in comfort, and I’ve actually got time to read for the first time in years. I’d hardly call it suffering.’

‘You’re right,’ said Will. ‘Of course you are right. There’s still a part of me that wishes for dramatics – for magical artefacts and prophecies and the shining clarity of the Black Rider challenging me on an icy path at Midwinter.’

‘It would be easier, if it were like that every time, wouldn’t it?’ said Jane. 

‘Clearer, simpler, yes,’ said Will.

Jane invited him to stay for dinner.

V. Will

Will strode along the snow-covered path, two dogs at his heels, occasionally pausing to push branches aside. The morning was utterly still, and it was as if the snow had swallowed sound. The tree-branches were black, and weighed down with fresh snow that had fallen in the night. The road had disappeared behind a tangle of trees, and Will felt the rest of the world — his siblings, his parents’ old house, the familiar rituals of the week before Christmas — fall away. 

He carried a sturdy wooden staff, not because he needed it for balance, but rather to clear a path through the snow, which had fallen unseasonably early. He had escaped the festivities, ostensibly to collect a fresh supply of mince pies from the baker before they closed for Christmas Eve, but really to get away from the crowds, the enclosing tension of the house’s four walls, and the decisions he and his siblings were going to have to make together. Being back in his childhood bedroom, dragging a Christmas tree back to the house with James, followed by two bounding dogs, eating fruit cake in the squashy chairs of the living room in front of a roaring fire made the years shift and slide confusingly. He had to keep reminding himself of the decades that had passed, the strands of grey in his hair, and the creases in the corners of his eyes.

But the time had passed, and none of his siblings were young any more, and they were going to have to decide what to do about the family home. Without any real discussion, they had come to an unspoken agreement that the decision would be put aside until after Christmas Day, but the weight of it hung heavy in the air, dampening and subduing the celebrations. Will had felt stifled, desperate to walk across snowy tracks in the crisp, cold air. 

The path curved away sharply, and Will shivered, remembering other paths and other choices, and all that still lay before him in his long, long life. The snow had begun to fall again. Will turned, and looked back. The fresh snow had already covered his footprints. 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic makes reference to a canonical character death, but no other character deaths occur.
> 
> The title is a reference to a poem from Jo Walton's _Tir Tanagiri Saga_.


End file.
